New York playwrights getting political

MICHAEL KILIANCHICAGO TRIBUNE

It doesn't seem to have hurt his poll standings much, but President Bush is being hectored by moviemakers (Michael Moore, "Fahrenheit 9/11"; John Sayles, "Silver City"), book writers (Kitty Kelley, "The Family"; Graydon Carter, "What We've Lost"; Seymour Hersh, "Chain of Command"), and even musicians (Bruce Springsteen, the Dixie Chicks, James Taylor).

Now, New York playwrights are weighing in.

It's not a direct assault, as we had back in the 1960s with the highly polemical anti-Lyndon Johnson play "MacBird!," which likened the much reviled Vietnam War president to one of Shakespeare's most famous villains.

Getting the word out

Rather than attack Bush personally, these modern-day bards are merely asserting, in a variety of ways and a series of new one-act plays presented as "The Democracy Project," that during this administration, we have begun to lose our democracy.

"There's this general sense in the New York artistic community that it's an election year, an important election, and people need to be writing about democracy in one form or another," said Warren Leight, a Tony Award-winning playwright ("Side Man," "Shine," "High-Heeled Women").

But views may be a trifle sharper than that.

"Just because it's becoming a little Stalinist out there," Leight said in explaining the lack of a "MacBird!" approach, "doesn't mean the theater has to become Stalinist too."

"The golden era of agitprop plays is behind us now," said playwright Pippin Parker, artistic director of "The Democracy Project." "These are a whole range of pieces."

Onstage at 45 Below, a NoHo venue at 45 Bleecker St., the project is up through Oct. 2 and includes 24 short plays and theatrical presentations whipped up in quick fashion by Leight, Parker and 22 other illustrious playwrights, among them Jon Robin Baitz, Lynn Nottage, Lee Blessing, Eduardo Machado and Tom Fontana.

Organized by New York's Naked Angels theater company and the Culture Project, the series is being presented in four consecutive groupings of works, with such provocative titles as "Patriot, Schmatriot," "Reagan in Hell," "White Jesus" and "American Past Time."

Leight's piece is called "What We Know So Far" and focuses on the use of fear on the American public through the news media. The setting is a cable news network that is reporting as breaking news some impending catastrophe, though it has few facts.

"They don't know much, but they're on the air," he said.

Fontana's "Kandor," said Parker, "is a black futuristic comedy, kind of allegorical, about a Planet Bush. The people have willfully submitted to the force that's going to screw them. They're waiting for a comic book-type super hero to save them."

Unconventional behavior

According to Leight, he and other New York playwrights were inspired by this summer's Republican convention and the infringements they say they witnessed on civil liberties.

"People wear anti-Bush T-shirts outside the convention hall and they get arrested," Leight said. "It's been pretty clear that you're allowed to express your opinion only under the eyes of automatic weapon-toting policemen, and there's a sense that the way this goes is toward a banana republic."

He complained that criticism of the war in Iraq is being stifled.

"Even George Bush senior said the other night that if you're speaking out against the war, you're speaking against the troops and risking harming our boys over there," Leight said. "With that kind of rhetoric, it's a short step from where we are to something scarier. You're no longer talking about a government; you're talking about a regime. I think that's the fear."

(In fairness, I should be happy to give equal space here to 24 New York playwrights presenting a program of works applauding what's transpired under the Bush administration but could find none -- at least not in NoHo.)

The theatrical evenings are being hosted by author Kurt Vonnegut, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham, former Clinton White House presidential aide John Podesta and other intellectual worthies of more NoHo than Crawford, Texas, political hue.

Tickets cost $15, which fails to cover the cost of production. According to Parker, Naked Angels picks up the rest of the tab.

"The writers are doing this for nothing," he said. "We provide the actors with free transportation, which is to say, we give each one a Metro subway card."

Leight said the playwrights often lose money.

"You end up losing a fortune when you do these things because you go out to dinner with actors and they never put enough money on the check," he said.

The Culture Project space at 45 Bleecker has only 99 seats. Aside from providing cheap eats for actors, what impact do they expect "The Democracy Project" to have?

Parker said they plan to package several of the plays and distribute them to schools in time for the election.

The power of a message

Leight acknowledged that, "These one-acts have the shelf life of lettuce." But he noted that the Swift Boat ads attacking John Kerry's war record actually played in very few places yet had tremendous impact.

"Everyone's doing their own piece in the desperate hope that somehow what we write will get people to think or feel or get angry or motivate people," he said.

"This is a good time to get people thinking about how precious democracy is."